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Loop
Loop(ループ Rūpu) is the third in the series of Ring novels by Koji Suzuki. The story revolves around a simulated reality, exactly the same as our own, known as the Loop: created to simulate the emergence and evolution of life. It is in this alternate universe that the events of the previous novels, Ring and Spiral took place. Plot The story revolves around a medical student named Kaoru Futami whose father has contracted a deadly disease called Metastatic Human Cancer (MHC), a cancer involving both animals and plants. Kaoru knew that his father was involved with a massive supercomputer project named LOOP. The LOOP was a computer simulation of the emergence of life but still unable to simulate such a thing. It is known that everyone who was involved in the LOOP has died of the same cancer. In the course of events, he meets a woman named Reiko and falls in love with her. Reiko becomes pregnant with Kaoru's child, which makes Reiko vulnerable to MHC. Kaoru continues his investigations which lead him to a man (and the last surviving person involved in the LOOP) named Amano. Amano revealed to him that LOOP was a project involving a hundred supercomputers strung together with the aim to recreate life. Amano tells Kaoru of a lab in New Mexico where another scientist might be alive. Kaoru ventures there only to find the scientist dead. He enters the lab and finds a pair of virtual reality goggles and gloves. He tries them and minutes later, he is in the LOOP. In the loop, he sees everything but one event intrigued him, the emergence of the Ring Virus. There in the LOOP, he sees complete details of the events in the previous novels from different angles. After some discussion with Amano, he knows that the LOOP's creator wanted to recreate Ryuji's death and by doing that, he could clone him and insert him into a woman's womb. But what they made was a cloned Ryuji with the Ring Virus in him. When Ryuji was born, the virus escaped and mutated. Desperate to find a cure for MHC, he ventures only to encounter a storm leaving him on the verge of death. Then, he was saved by an old man. After telling the old man the truth, it turned out that Kaoru was Ryuji's clone. Because of that, Kaoru has an exceptional gift, immunity to MHC. In order to know what made Kaoru immune, he had to be analyzed. An analysis machine was created. The bad side though is that the analyzed object must be molecularized, meaning that Kaoru could die. As a hero, he agreed. After that, the old man transferred Kaoru's analyzed molecules in the LOOP. He promised that his wife could see him through the VR Goggles and Reiko won't be alone. In the LOOP, Kaoru is sitting watching the stars, thinking that Reiko is watching over him. Gallery novel-loop.jpg|Original Japanese cover A2c297e6622ea3ed95986606425b4588.jpg|1st English edition 9780007179091.jpg|2nd English edition Trivia *In the Japanese edition cover, the cover features the eyes of a child from the book cover of Spiral. Category:Novels